Quotes about herring
page 77

“A man can never dream these kinds of things
Especially when she came and spread her wings
Whispered in my ear the things I'd like
Then she flew away into the night.”

Liam Gallagher (1972) English musician and songwriter

Song Songbird

Dreams, Night

“I say that if England takes due advantage of her insular position, and confines herself to her own affairs, and does not run into needless and rash disputes with other countries, there never was a time when she stood so free from danger of war as at the present moment.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1849/feb/26/financial-reform in the House of Commons (26 February 1849). 1840s

War, Time, Country

“By that time it was already clear that the next prime minster was going to be Golda Meir, a woman whom I frankly detested – a mutual sentiment, I might add. I knew her as an opinionated, obstinate person, primitive in her outlook, rigid in her attitudes, with a genius for reaching and exploiting the deepest fears and prejudices of the Jewish masses. I was certain that with her as prime minister, all peace efforts would come to a total standstill.”

Uri Avnery (1923–2018) Israeli writer

My Friend, the Enemy (1986) – page 80

Fear, Peace, Effort, Time

“On occasion, quite apart from any threat of persecution, an advocate may believe her ideas will be more persuasive if her readers are unaware of her identity. Anonymity thereby provides a way for a writer who may be personally unpopular to ensure that readers will not prejudge her message simply because they do not like its proponent.”

John Paul Stevens (1920–2019) Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (Majority opinion, 514 U.S. 334 (1995)

Way, Idea, Personality

“The problem is, when Oprah lost all that weight, her head didn't get any smaller. And so she looks kind of like a person carrying a balloon.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Playboy interview, May 1990
Columns and articles

Problem, Personality

“Fifty years ago the legal injustice imposed upon women was appalling. Wives, widows and mothers seemed to have been hunted out by the law on purpose to see in how many ways they could be wronged and made helpless. A wife by her marriage lost all right to any personal property she might have. The income of her land went to her husband, so that she was made absolutely penniless. If a woman earned a dollar by scrubbing, her husband had a right to take the dollar and go and get drunk with it and beat her afterwards. It was his dollar. If a woman wrote a book the copyright of the same belonged to her husband and not to her. The law counted out in many states how many cups and saucers, spoons and knives and chairs a widow might have when her husband died. I have seen many a widow who took the cups she had bought before she was married and bought them again after her husband died, so as to have them legally. The law gave no right to a married woman to any legal existence at all. Her legal existence was suspended during marriage. She could neither sue nor be sued. If she had a child born alive the law gave her husband the use of all her real estate as long as he should live, and called it by the pleasant name of "the estate by courtesy."”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

When the husband died the law gave the widow the use of one-third of the real estate belonging to him, and it was called the "widow's encumbrance."
The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)

Women, Marriage, Books, Law

“The measure of woman’s distaste for any part of her life lies not in the loudness of her lamentations (these are only an attempt to buy a martyr’s crown at a reduced price) but in her persistent pursuit of that occupation of which she never ceases to complain.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 15

Life, Parting

“In the criminal code we find no feminine pronouns, as "He," "His," "Him," we are arrested, tried and hung, but singularly enough, we are denied the highest privileges of citizens, because the pronouns "She," "Hers" and "Her," are not found in the constitutions. It is a pertinent question, if women can pay the penalties of their crimes as "He," why may they not enjoy the privileges of citizens as "He?"”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton book The Woman's Bible

The Woman's Bible (1898)

Women, Penalty, Question

“And as every one of their dear sex is the rival of the rest of her kind, timidity passes for folly in their charitable judgements; and gentleness for dullness; and silence -- which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling folks, and tacit protestantism -- above all, finds no mercy at the hands of the female Inquisition.”

William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair

The narrator, LXII
Vanity Fair (1847–1848)

Sex, Silence

“Of course I’m delighted that Fun Home has met with such success, but it still strikes me as very unlikely that an odd, cerebral story about a lesbian and her closeted gay suicidal mortician father would have struck a chord with anyone but me.”

Alison Bechdel (1960) American cartoonist, author

on her breakout graphic novel http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article6914181.ece?token=null&offset=108&page=10 Other

Home, Suicide, Success

“Give an earnest-hearted, devoted girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 122.

Peace, Girl, Heart, Night

“As I have noted, I find a thoughtful, analytical criticism most helpful. I do not think any judge can address a vast array of cases and issues without testing and re-testing his or her reasoning and opinions in the crucible of debate. However, since we are quite limited in public debate about matters that may come before the court, such debate must, for the most part, occur intramurally, thus placing a premium on outside scholarship.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Thinking, Help, Parting

“"Why are they ashamed and miserable?"
"They're repenting they're white. Any thinking human does it. Don't you read your own history books? So if you attack those miserable moderns or modernist, knight, you'll be making a miserable historical mistake. You will be preventing whites from hating their own whiteness."
Don Quixote finally refused the dogs' attack on her attack: "Liberalism has never stopped me from doing anything", said the knight.”

Kathy Acker (1947–1997) American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet

Don Quixote (1986)

Hate, Books, Dogs, History

“A woman always exaggerates her beauty and its influence when they are past; and it was a perpetual grief to think what her pretty face might have done for her.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Beauty, Thinking, Past

“From 1920 onward, [Mussolini] depicted Italy as a ‘proletarian’ nation exploited by hostile ‘plutocratic’ countries determined to deny her her rightful place under the sun. The true class struggle, according to Fascist doctrine, was the struggle between nations. Fascism strove to surmount narrow class allegiances: all classes had to subordinate their private interests to those of the nation and collaborate against the external enemy.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Property and Freedom (1999), p. 219

Hostility, Sun, Country

“Her former trials had been sharp agony and strong excitement. Her present had neither the one nor the other; yet it was fraught with as heavy suffering, as any that had gone before it; even though she knew not, guessed not, _all_ that depended upon her conversion. It would have been comparatively easy to have endured, for her faith's sake, harshness and contempt; in such a case, self-respect rises to sustain us, and we value our own tenets the more, from their startling contrast with those which could command the cruelty we endure; but Father Denis used harshness neither of manner nor of words.”

Grace Aguilar (1816–1847) Novelist, writer

Source: The Vale of Cedars (1850), Chapter II

Faith, Strong, Suffering, Dependency

“Nature has only a limited number of procedures at her disposal and that the kinds of procedure which Nature uses at one level of reality are bound to reappear at different levels.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) French anthropologist and ethnologist

Source: Myth and Meaning (1978), Chapter 1 : The Meeting of Myth and Science

Nature, Reality

“…One thing alone can drive us, against our will, beyond these modest desires. If the next French attack against the German Empire found the Dutch among the enemy faction, at that exact moment Holland, by her senseless mistrust, would herself be precipitated into her ruin. Then, and only then, would it be necessary to attempt to put an end once and for all to the millenary struggle over the ruins of ancient Lotharingia, and once more to compel the countries of the Lower Rhine perforce to rejoin the great people whom they abandoned long ago. Holland holds in her hands the means of averting, by a just and fearless policy, these interminable conflagrations. The majestic progress of German affairs, the unity of our Empire from the North Sea to Lake Constance, the complete organisation of this unity are not to be impeded by the outcries of small peoples who cannot forget the splendour of past days.”

Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896) Historian, political writer

Statement (1869), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 257.

People, Past, Sea, Country

“The old lady Felderal had long railed at the emperor for not declaring war. She pretended that he feared to call on his subjects for the requisite means, lest their avarice, stronger than their patriotism, should depose him. When, however, war was declared, and the emperor's forces were victorious, she became enamoured of peace, and maintained that a moral and religious people ought not to rejoice at victories purchased by the sacrifice of human life. She invented a song, whose burden was "the golden days of commercial prosperity," and she organized a peace society, whose tenets compelled the members not to fight even an invading army. Finally, as these expedients failed to destroy the emperor, she collected the most desperate of her adherents, to concert means for tying his hands behind his back, "peaceably if they could, forcibly if they must," and delivering him to the king of Glanden.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

The Philosophical Emperor, a Political Experiment, or, The Progress of a False Position: (1841)

Life, War, People, Fear

“Yet no stiff and frowning face was hers, no undue austerity in her manners, but gay and simple loyalty, charm blended with modesty.”
Nec frons triste rigens nimiusque in moribus horror sed simplex hilarisque fides et mixta pudori gratia.

Statius Silvae

i, line 64
Silvae, Book V

Loyalty

“While the law dealt thus with her in regard to her property, it dealt still more hardly with her in regard to her children. No married mother could have any right to her child, and in most of the states of the Union that is the law to-day. But the law's in regard to the personal and property rights of women have been greatly changed and improved, and we are very grateful to the men who have done it.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)

Women, Men, Children, Law

“Maddow on Sarah Palin accepting Fed money after all: "You can see cake from her house, and you can eat it from there too."”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, March 2009 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29859430/23

Money, Housing

“The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff. Her thoughts enter my bloodstream and make me very sad. I say as she doers: if only I could accomplish something! My existence seems humiliating to me. We don't have the right to strut around, not until we've made something of ourselves.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Worpswede 1897; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 193
w:Marie Bashkirtseff was a woman-painter born in the Ukraine, who died very young; her Journal was published c. 1895
1897

Sadness

“Eleanor Roosevelt, fine, precise, hand-worked like ivory. Her voice was almost attractive … One had the impression of a lady who was finally becoming a woman, which is to say that she was just a little bitchy about it all; nice bitchy, charming, it had a touch of art to it, but it made one wonder if she were not now satisfying the last passion of them all, which was to become physically attractive, for she was better-looking than she had ever been.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)

Art, Passion

“I am late with the new Doris Lessing [The Golden Notebook]. I make no apology: it has taken me a long time to read (568 pages of close print) and at the end of it all I feel cheated. This talented writer has attempted an experiment which has failed, essayed a scale which is beyond her…. This is a book of revolt – political, social, sexual. Anna [the heroine] became a Communist in South Africa, seeing in Communism a "moral energy" not to be found in other creeds or in the long-entrenched privileged class. Anna is also concerned with being a "free woman" – rebelling against traditional male dominance – and with achieving maximal erotic fulfilment…. There is no doubt about the great moral virtues here – intelligence, honesty, integrity – but it is the aesthetic virtues that seem to be lacking. The characters do not really interest us: when we have dialogue it is strangely unnatural … Mrs Lessing’s old singleness of vision, her strength as a writer, is not to be found here. [Review in the English provincial newspaper the Yorkshire Post, 1962]”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

People, Joseph Conrad, Doris Lessing

Books, Feeling, Intelligence, Communication

“The last member of the party to disembark was a girl of about nineteen, and it was the young man who stood at the boat's prow to lift her high and dry upon land. She gave him a brave and pretty smile of thanks, but no words passed between them.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 13 : His Own Kind

Smile, Girl

“The power of the average pop artist and her products lies in the pornography that is her 'art,' in her hackneyed political posturing, and in the fantastic technology that is Auto-Tune (without which all the sound you'd hear these 'singers' emit would be a bedroom whisper).”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Harvey Sweinstein And Hollywood's Hos http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/20/harvey-sweinstein-and-hollywoods-hos/," The Daily Caller, October 20, 2017. 2010s, 2017

Art

“It is said that it is not good for man to be alone. This is true, not only in the sense in which our women’s rights’ friends so zealously and wisely teach, but it is true as to nations. The voice of civilization speaks an unmistakable language against the isolation of families, nations and races, and pleads for composite nationality as essential to her triumphs. Those races of men who have maintained the most distinct and separate existence for the longest periods of time; which have had the least intercourse with other races of men are standing confirmation of the folly of isolation. The very soil of the national mind becomes in such cases barren, and can only be resuscitated by assistance from without.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Women, Men, Family, Sense

“Mark: Um. I don't know Hayley. I don't know. Because I admire the fact that you keep challenging yourself. You know, last week was an enormous challenge for you and you keep doing that and I don't want to discourage that because it's a fantastic thing about you. But honestly, I just really don't think that you totally connected with that at the level that Anastacia actually bought the meaning of that song and what it meant to her. I didn't feel it from you. It didn't connect for me like some of the others that you've done have.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 11

Feeling, Thinking

“Therefore, since the others are so lacking in spirit, I think it is opportune for you to head the war against the King; and, while it is only natural for the other descendants of Heracles, and for men who are under the bonds of their polities and laws, to cleave fondly to that state in which they happen to dwell, it is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom, to consider all Hellas (Greece) your fatherland, as did the founder of your race, and to be as ready to brave perils for her sake as for the things about which you are personally most concerned.”

Isocrates (-436–-338 BC) ancient greek rhetorician

To Philip, 5.127 (Loeb).

Men, War, Law, Nature

“The phenomenal Celia Cruz [is missing]. But although she couln't be here physically [Cruz died in 2003], I felt her presence throughout the entire recording of the album. It's still impossible for me to feel like Celia's gone, simply because she is still so alive to me through her music and the friendship we shared for so many years. There were moments during this recording that felt to me like she was directing me to a degree or giving me ideas for where to go with the song.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Reuters (July 23, 2007)
2007, 2008

Friendship, Music, Feeling, Idea

“With respect to the present expedition, it is defensible on the ground that the enormous power of France enables her to coerce the weaker state to become the enemy of England…the law of nature is stronger than even the law of nations. It is to the law of self-preservation that England appeals for justification of her proceedings. It is admitted…that if Denmark had evidenced any hostility towards this country, then we should have been justified in measures of retaliation. How then is the case altered, when we find Denmark acting under the coercion of a power notoriously hostile to us? Knowing, as we do, that Denmark is under the influence of France, can there be the shadow of a doubt that the object of our enemy would have been accomplished? Denmark coerced into hostility stands in the same position as Denmark voluntarily hostile, when the law of self-preservation comes into play…England, according to that law of self-preservation which is a fundamental principle of the law of nations, is justified in securing, and therefore enforcing, from Denmark a neutrality which France would by compulsion have converted into an active hostility.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (3 February 1808) on the British bombardment of Copenhagen, quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), pp. 1-3.
1800s

Hostility, Law, Nature, Country

“Sigmund Freud would have been a wonderful witness here. He would have explained the use of derivatives as denial and rationalization—the pretense that we are doing one thing when we really mean to do something else; the relationship between the banker and its client as one of ambivalence and reliance on the father figure; the use of accounting conventions as repression and the absence of reality testing; the work environment as the pleasure/pain principle—current pleasure for future damage, let someone else pick up the pieces; leveraging and doubling our bets as counter-phobic behavior; termination therapy as what happens when the CFO and Treasurer get caught; and, of course, transference—how the trader seeks to shift responsibility to his or her superior when the string runs out.”

Eugene Rotberg (1930)

Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs. http://3197d6d14b5f19f2f440-5e13d29c4c016cf96cbbfd197c579b45.r81.cf1.rackcdn.com/collection/papers/1990/1994_0623_RotbergTestimony.pdf, 23 June 1994

Pain, Pleasure, Behavior, Reality

“She knows her man, and when you rant and swear,
Can draw you to her with a single hair.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Persius, Satire v, line 246.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Drawing

“(about his wife) in Jean I think I've found the ideal partner… I think… I abuse her.”

Kevin Keegan (1951) English footballer

Thinking

“Her breath a warm fire
In every lovers heart
A mistress to magicians
And a dancer to the gods”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Angelsea
Song lyrics, Catch Bull at Four (1972)

God, Lovers, Heart

“One has never known a good man to whom dogs were not dear; but many of the best women have no such fondness. You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men. For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless brutes — possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. Yet will coquetry teach her to caress any dog in the presence of a man enslaved by her.”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. VI

Women, Men, Dogs

“Numbers were a mystery to me. I was so far behind. It was only in Nairobi, at age ten, that I figured out anything at all about the way time is calculated: minutes, hours, years. In Saudi Arabia the calendar had been Islamic, based on lunar months; Ethiopia maintained an ancient solar calendar. The year was written 1399 in Saudi Arabia, 1972 in Ethiopia, and 1980 in Kenya and everywhere else. In Ethiopia we even had a different clock: sunrise was called one o'clock and noon was called six. (Even within Kenya, people used two systems for telling time, the British and the Swahili.) The months, the days--everything was conceived differently. Only in Juja Road Primary school did I begin to figure out what people meant when they referred to precise dates and times. Grandma never learned to tell time at all. All her life, noon was when shadows were short, and your age was measured by rainy seasons. She got by perfectly well with her system.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 5: Secret Rendezvous, Sex, and the Scent of Sukumawiki

Life, People, Age, School

“I am not her to vent my feelings. I am here to achieve my goals.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Komarr (1998)

Feeling

“The last subject to which I am desirous to direct your attention as to a means of self-improvement, is that of philanthropic exertion for the good of others. I allude here more particularly to the efforts which you may be able to make for the benefit of those whose social position is inferior to your own. It is my deliberate conviction, founded on long and anxious consideration of the subject, that not only might great positive good be effected by an association of earnest young men, working together under judicious arrangements for this common end, but that its reflected advantages would overpay the toil of effort, and more than indemnify the cost of personal sacrifice. And how wide a field is now open before you! It would be unjust to pass over unnoticed the shining examples of virtues, that are found among tho poor and indigent There are dwellings so consecrated by patience, by self-denial, by filial piety, that it is not in the power of any physical deprivation to render them otherwise than happy. But sometimes in close contiguity with these, what a deep contrast of guilt and woe! On the darker features of the prospect we would not dwell, and that they are less prominent here than in larger cities we would with gratitude acknowledge; but we cannot shut our eyes to their existence. We cannot put out of sight that improvidence that never looks beyond the present hour; that insensibility that deadens the heart to the claims of duty and affection; or that recklessness which in the pursuit of some short-lived gratification, sets all regard for consequences aside. Evils such as these, although they may present themselves in any class of society, and under every variety of circumstances, are undoubtedly fostered by that ignorance to which the condition of poverty is most exposed; and of which it has been truly said, that it is the night of the spirit,—and a night without moon and without stars. It is to associated efforts for its removal, and for the raising of the physical condition of its subjects, that philanthropy must henceforth direct her regards. And is not such an object great 1 Are not such efforts personally elevating and ennobling? Would that some part of the youthful energy of this present assembly might thus expend itself in labours of benevolence! Would that we could all feel the deep weight and truth of the Divine sentiment that " No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

George Boole, "Right Use of Leisure," cited in: James Hogg Titan Hogg's weekly instructor, (1847) p. 250; Also cited in: R. H. Hutton, " Professor Boole http://books.google.com/books?id=pfMEAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA153," (1866), p. 153 1840s

Men, Truth, Youth, Feeling

““Why can nothing be simple?”
Geloë shifted on her stool. The wise woman’s voice was surprisingly sympathetic. “Because nothing is simple, Prince Josua.””

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 20, “Travelers and Messengers” (p. 635).

“The female body’s unbearable hiddenness applies to all aspects men’s dealings with women. What does it look like in there? Did she have an orgasm? Is it really my child? Who was my real father? Mystery surrounds women’s sexuality. This mystery is the main reason for the imprisonment man has imposed on women. Only by confining his wife in a locked harem guarded by eunuchs could he be certain that her son was also his.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 22

Women, Men

“It's very difficult standing here blessed as her one and only sister. Yolanda, from your one and only, I thank you for being a sister and for being a friend.”

Bernice King (1963) American minister, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.

On sister's death (24 May 2007) http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-24-yolanda-king-funeral_N.htm

Sister

“It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Painting and Culture' p. 56
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Life, Art, Intelligence, Suffering

“On the beryl-rimmed rebecs of Ruby
Brought fresh from the hyaline streams,
She played on the banks of the Yuba
Such songs as she heard in her dreams.”

Thomas Holley Chivers Lily Adair

Lily Adair.

Dreams

“An Alma girl! oh shame, deep shame,
To Brahma's race and Brahma's name!
Unmarked, unpitied, she turned aside,
For a moment her bursting tears to hide.
None thought of the Bayadere, till the fire
Blazed redly and fiercely the funeral pyre,
Then like a thought she darted by,
And sprang on the burning pile to die!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Bayadere from The London Literary Gazette (30th August, 6th and 13th September 1823)
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Girl, Tear

“Loneliness, her arch enemy, never seemed content.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 9 (p. 150)

Loneliness

“Since the Persian monarchy began some 2550 years ago, Iran has had more than 350 kings. No fewer than half of them were either assassinated or killed in battle. Many went into exile to escape death. Iran's long history is full of fallen crowns and shattered imperial dreams. Of Mohammad-Reza Shah's five immediate predecessors, one was assassinated and three were forced into exile. What makes Mohammad-Reza Shah's tragedy special is that he was, perhaps, the first Iranian king in more than a century to have a real possibility of ending his reign peacefully and dying in his own country. That this was not the case was, to a large extent, the result of Iran's chronic political underdevelopment. But the Shah's own failure to operate within the realities of Iranian society - unpleasant as they undoubtedly were - contributed to his downfall and its dramatic consequences for the nation as a whole. The fall of the Shah was, in a since, the prelude to more than a decade of instability in the region, culminating in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent massacre of Kurds and shi'ites in Mesopotamia. It may take Iran and her region many more years before the shockwaves unleashed by the fall of the Shah are fully absorbed.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Death, Dreams, History, Failure

“His shroud was damp, his face was white:
He said,—"I cannot sleep,
Your tears have made my shroud so wet;
Oh, mother, do not weep!"
Oh, love is strong!—the mother's heart
Was filled with tender fears;
Oh, love is strong!—and for her child
Her grief restrained its tears.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Little Shroud from The London Literary Gazette (28th April 1832)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love, Fear, Tear, Sleep

“Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,—
So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace
When the drear soul desires thee.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti The House of Life

Gracious Moonlight.
The House of Life (1870—1881)

Cars, Soul

“Now shall the promises made to Christ by God the Father before the foundation of the world, the promises of the covenant of redemption, be fully accomplished. Christ shall now have perfectly obtained the joy set before Him, for which He undertook those great sufferings in His state of humiliation. Now shall all the hopes and expectations of the saints be fulfilled. The state of the church before was progressive and preparatory; but now she is arrived at her most perfect state of glory. All the glory of the church on earth is but a faint shadow of this her consummate glory in heaven.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

A History of the Work of Redemption including a View of Church History (1839).

God, World, Hope, Suffering

“The influence of a woman's first love is felt on her whole after-existence: never can she dream such dream again. For a woman there is no second-love—youth, hope, belief, are all given to her first attachment; if unrequited, the heart becomes its own Prometheus, creative, ideal, but with the vulture preying upon it for ever.—If deceived, the whole poetry of life is gone; the very essence of poetry is belief, and how can she, whose sweet eager credulity has once learnt the bitter truth—that its reliance was in vain, how can she ever believe again?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Love, Life, Truth, Youth

“What shall we say of the Intelligence that plans all this? Can the Creator be less than the creature? Shall we not say that Intelligence is indestructible, and its measure is its Power to adapt means to ends? Intelligence, Matter, Energy — nature's trinity in her manifestations.”

Elisha Gray (1835–1901) American electrical engineer

Energy and vibration: energy, sound, heat, light, explosives (1900); Fords, Howard & Hulbert, p. 166
Nature's Miracles (1900)

Intelligence, Nature

“I stand in this parking lot, realizing that I've never been this far from home, and here is this girl I love and cannot follow. I hope this is the hero's errand, because not following her is the hardest thing I've ever done.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, p. 304
Paper Towns (2008)

Love, Hope, Home, Girl

“In the upstairs bedroom, old Ann dies very slowly, remembering the events of the long-ago wedding night and the next morning… She is attended by a nurse with an Irish accent (Eileen Atkins), who sometimes prompts her: "Remember a happy time!" Dissolve to Ann's memory of a happy time. It is so mundane that if it qualifies as a high point in her life, it compares with Paris Hilton remembering a good stick of gum.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/evening-2007 of Evening (29 June 2007) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Life, Wedding, Memory, Time

“Very well, the starting point would be that claim of Professor Quarrey’s, which had been in the news at the beginning of the year, that the country’s greatest export was noxious gas. And who would like to stir up the fuss again? Obviously, the Canadians, cramped into a narrow band to the north of their more powerful neighbors, growing daily angrier about the dirt that drifted to them on the wind, spoiling crops, causing chest diseases and soiling laundry hung out to dry. So she’d called the magazine Hemisphere in Toronto, and the editor had immediately offered ten thousand dollars for three articles.
Very conscious that all calls out of the country were apt to be monitored, she’d put the proposition to him in highly general terms: the risk of the Baltic going the same way as the Mediterranean, the danger of further dust-bowl like the Mekong Desert, the effects of bringing about climactic change. That was back in the news—the Russians had revised their plan to reverse the Yenisei and Ob. Moreover, there was the Danube problem, worse than the Rhine had ever been, and Welsh nationalists were sabotaging pipelines meant to carry “their” water into England, and the border war in West Pakistan had been dragging on so long most people seemed to have forgotten that it concerned a river.
And so on.
Almost as soon as she started digging, though, she thought she might never be able to stop. It was out of the question to cover the entire planet. Her pledged total of twelve thousand words would be exhausted by North American material alone.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

June “A PLACE TO STAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

War, People, Disease, Way

“Rumour her tidings, whether bad or good,
Has always tended to exaggerate.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

O bene o mal che la Fama ci apporti,
Signor, di sempre accrescere ha in usanza.
Canto XXXVIII, stanza 42 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

“India is immortal if she persists in her search for God. But if she goes in for politics and social conflict, she will die.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

A few hours before his death, as quoted in Bulletin of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Volume 14 (1963), p. 469

God, Search

““Don’t be sentimental,” he chided. “Memories aren’t enough.”
It was fruitless to argue the niceties of that: he was telling her that he was in pain; he didn’t want platitudes or metaphysics.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Part Twelve “Stalking Paradise”, Chapter i “A Chapter of Accidents”, Section 4 (p. 517)
(1987), BOOK THREE: OUT OF THE EMPTY QUARTER

Pain, Memory

“I would not change my native land
For rich Peru with all her gold.
A nobler prize lies in my hand
Than East or Western Indies hold.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Song 5, "Praise for Birth and Education in a Christian Land", stanza 3. Cf. Psalms 119:72 (KJV): "The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver."
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)

Change

“Hey, does your mother sew? BOOM! Get her to sew that.”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

YouTube.com, Patrick Being Weird (Bonus Track) on YouTube

“Great Britain may certainly continue to uphold her envied supremacy, sustained by her coal, iron, capital, and skill, if, acting on the Baconian axiom, " Knowledge is Power," she shall diligently promote moral and professional culture among all ranks of her productive population.”

Andrew Ure (1778–1857) Scottish doctor and chemist

Source: The Philosophy of Manufactures, 1835, p. vii

Knowledge, Envy

“She'll let you in her house
If you come knockin' late at night.
She'll let you in her mouth
If the words you say are right.
If you pay the price,
She'll let you deep inside.
But there's a secret garden she hides.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Secret Garden"
Song lyrics, Singles

Secret, Housing, Night

“I think that every woman who has any margin of time or money to spare should adopt some one public interest, some philanthropic undertaking, or some social agitation of reform, and give to that cause whatever time and work she may be able to afford; thus completing her life by adding to her private duties the noble effort to advance God's Kingdom beyond the bounds of her home.”

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading suffragette

Lecture VI, p. 158
The Duties of Women (1881)

Life, Money, God, Home

“One young lady asserted that she had never looked at any of the cards in the cars in which she had been riding for years. When questioned further, it appeared that she knew by heart almost every advertisement appearing on the line (Chicago and Evanston line), and that the goods advertised had won her highest esteem. She was not aware of the fact that she had been studying the advertisements, and flatly resented the suggestion that she had been influenced by them. Some of the goods advertised were known to her only by these advertisements, yet she supposed that they had nothing to do with her esteem of the goods. She supposed that she had always known them, that they were used in her home, or that they had been recommended to her. She did not remember when she had first heard of them.”

Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) President of Northwestern university and psychologist

Source: The Psychology of Advertising in Theory and Practice, 1908, p. 370-371

Cars, Home, Question, Study

“The nineteenth century moved fast and furious, so that one who moved in it felt sometimes giddy, watching it spin; but the eleventh moved faster and more furiously still. The Norman conquest of England was an immense effort, and its consequences were far-reaching, but the first crusade was altogether the most interesting event in European history. Never has the western world shown anything like the energy and unity with which she then flung herself on the East, and for the moment made the East recoil. Barring her family quarrels, Europe was a unity then, in thought, will and object. Christianity was the unit.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

World, Family, History, Effort

“Thus night with all her snares passed through the upper world
and baited all heads sweetly, fed all foolish hopes,
for night can bring to men all shrewish day denies,
wrapped as a gift in the green leaves of opiate dream.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Book VII, line 356
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

Men, World, Dreams, Hope

“But on her side the Colchian ceases not to foam with hellish poisons and to sprinkle all the silences of Lethe's bough: exerting her spells she constrains his reluctant eyes, exhausting all her Stygian power of hand and tongue.”
Contra Tartareis Colchis spumare venenis cunctaque Lethaei quassare silentia rami perstat et adverso luctantia lumina cantu obruit atque omnem linguaque manuque fatigat vim Stygiam.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VIII, Lines 83–87

Silence

“Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are.”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

"Song. She is not fair"
Poems (1851)

Smile

“(On the prospect of Thatcher's death) Be serious - this is just a fantasy, because if she were killed, would it actually make any difference? Would things get any better? Course they wouldn't; don't kid yourself. They'd get worse, because she would become a martyr – this monetarist martyr - a cult figure, like Eva Peron. Can you imagine the televised funeral? There she'd be, laid out in a glass coffin, in the blue gear, the hair-do and all the rest of it. She'd be laying there just really life-like - just like she was in life - a bit warmer. It would be on the telly. You thought Winston Churchill was bad; you can imagine what this would be like. And then, of course, it wouldn't stop at that. There would be films - The Night Brighton Rocked. There'd be musicals. Tim Rice would be churning out the musicals about her life - Magita. There'd be Elaine Page belting out the big numbers: 'Don't Cry for Me, Barnet Finchley”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Token Women, 1984
Stand-up

Life, Death, Women, Music

“Age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite monotony: in fact, neither Age nor Custom could do anything (as they said, their voices rising) with the American novelist Gertrude Johnson.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1, p. 9

Age

“To this fine spirit our earth owes her greatest:
For the future is purchased by scorning the present,
And life is redeemed from its clay soil by fame.
* King, not a vestige remains of your palaces;
Conqueror, forgotten the fame of your battles:
But the Poet yet lives in the sweetness of music—
He appeal'd to the heart, that never forgets.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Three Brothers from The London Literary Gazette (20th June 1829) as Fame : An Apologue
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Life, Music, Future, Heart

“In recent days we witness attempts to break this coexistence apart. Today, for example, I have heard of an attempt to move a woman from her seat on a bus. I oppose this unequivocally. I believe we must not allow margins groups to break our common denominator and we must keep our public spaces open and safe for all of our citizens. We must find the uniting and mediating ground rather than the things that divide and separate us.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

"Israel's 'Rosa Parks' refuses to take back seat" on CNN.com (19 December 2011) http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/19/world/meast/israel-rosa-parks/index.html. 2010s, 2011

“The Indian…stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

April 26, 1841
Journals (1838-1859)

Nature, Housing

“Effective leadership begins with having the right mindset; in particular, it begins with having an ownership mind-set. This means a willingness to put oneself in the shoes of a decision maker and think through all of the considerations that the decision maker must factor into his or her thinking and actions.
Having an ownership mind-set is essential to developing into an effective leader. By the same token, the absence of an ownership mind-set often explains why certain people with great promise ultimately fail to reach their leadership potential.
An ownership mind-set involves three essential elements, which I will put in the form of questions:”

Robert S. Kaplan (1940) American accounting academic

Can you figure out what you believe, as if you were an owner?
Can you act on those beliefs?
Do you act in a way that adds value to someone else: a customer, a client, a colleague, or a community? Do you take responsibility for the positive and negative impact of your actions on others?
These elements are not a function of your formal position in an organization. They are not a function of title, power, or wealth, although these factors can certainly be helpful in enabling you to act like an owner. These elements are about what you do. They are about taking ownership of your convictions, actions, and impact on others. In my experience, great organizations are made up of executives who focus specifically on these elements and work to empower their employees to think and act in this way.
Source: What You're Really Meant To Do, 2013, p. 22-23

People, Shoe, Question, Thinking

“Democracy serves big business. Because of the expensive, competitive character of the multiparty system, democracy requires ample funds. It therefore naturally becomes the servant of the big international Jewish financiers, who enslave her by paying her. In this manner, a nation's fate is placed in the hands of a clique of bankers.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Fate, Democracy, Business, Nature

“I watched his interview with her, though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?' 'What was her answer?' I wonder. 'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

During the Larry King-Karla Faye Tucker exchange, Tucker never actually asked to be spared.
1990s
Source: "Devil May Care" by Tucker Carlson, Talk Magazine, September 1999, p. 106.

Question

“I want a revamped feminism. Putting the vamp back means the lady must be a tramp. My generation of Sixties rebels wanted to smash the bourgeois codes that had become the authoritarian totems of the Fifties. The 'nice' girl with her soft, sanitized speech and decorous manners had to go. Thirty years later, we're still stuck with her — in the official spokesmen and the anointed heiresses of the feminist establishment… Equal opportunity feminism, which I espouse, demands the removal of all barriers to woman's advance in the political and professional world — but not at the price of special protections for women which are infantilizing and anti-democratic.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), p. ix

Women, World, Girl

“The imperturbability of the Church resides in her ability to harmonize the unconditional preservation of eternal truths with an unmatchable elasticity of adjustment to the circumstances and challenges of changing times.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), Problems of Women's Education (1932)

Truth, Change, Time

“Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield; and both together heard
What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 26

Time, Flying, Night

“Who will wonder that Barbara had a headache, or that Barbara's mother was disposed to be cross, or that she slightly underrated Astley's, and thought the clown was older than they had taken him to be last night? Kit was not surprised to hear her say so--not he. He had already had a misgiving that the inconstant actors in that dazzling vision had been doing the same thing the night before last, and would do it again that night, and the next, and for weeks and months to come, though he would not be there. Such is the difference between yesterday and today. We are all going to the play, or coming home from it.”

Charles Dickens book The Old Curiosity Shop

Source: The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Ch. 40

Home, Night

“The Trusts and Corporations stood for the larger part of the new power that had been created since 1840, and were obnoxious because of their vigorous and unscrupulous energy. They were revolutionary, troubling all the old conventions and values, as the screws of ocean steamers must trouble a school of herring. They tore society to pieces and trampled it under foot.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

School, Parting

“Is there an inverse relation between knowledge and wisdom? At times it seems the more we know, the less we understand.
I am not the first to note this quandary. One scholar recently wrote, “Lysos and her followers chase the siren call of pastoralism, like countless romantics before them, idealizing a past Golden Age that never was, pursuing a serenity possible only in the imagination.””

David Brin book Glory Season

Introduction to Chapter 26 (p. 502)
Glory Season (1993)

Wisdom, Age, Imagination, Understanding

“Were the destiny of woman thus exactly marked out, did she invariably retain the shelter of a parent’s or guardian’s roof till she married, did marriage give her a sure home and a protector, were she never liable to be made a widow, or, if so, sure of finding immediate protection from a brother or new husband, so that she might never be forced to stand alone one moment, and were her mind given for this world only, with no faculties capable of eternal growth and infinite improvement, we would still demand of her a far wider and more generous culture than is proposed by those who so anxiously define her sphere.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Article, The New York Daily Tribune (30 September 1845); quoted in Brilliant Bylines (1986) by Barbara Belford.

Marriage, World, Home, Parent

“On her passion for acting, Mumtaz said “I used to feel a sort of emptiness before I started acting but not any longer… If I were not an actress, I’d have gone crazy.”

Mumtaz (actress) (1947) Indian film actress

December 1966 (Filmfare, December 7, 2011)
Quotes from Mumtaz

Passion, Feeling

“The name on the mailbox was Vera Rivken, and that was her full name. It was down on the Long Beach Pike, across the street from the Ferris Wheel and the Roller Coaster. Downstairs a poolhall, upstairs a few single apartments. No mistaking that flight of stairs; it possessed her odor. The banister was warped and bent, and the grey wallpaint was swollen, with puffed places that cracked open when I pushed them with my thumb.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, "I hear you spoke here tonight." "Oh, it was nothing," I replied modestly. "Yes," the little old lady nodded, "that's what I heard."”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Humor and the Presidency (1987).
1980s

“Yes, solitude amid her depths has many a hidden balm
Guarded for those who leave her not, to strengthen and to calm.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835 (1834), 'Chapter House, Furness Abbey' translation from an epistle of St. Beuve to A. Fontenay. (Presumably Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve)
Translations, From the French

Solitude

“The girl with her face. A Devolved Entity Manifested from the Other Now? A demon that wants to off her? It’s like the rumors of concentration camps. So weird she can’t believe it, and so plausible she can’t afford to disbelieve it.”

Lisa Mason book Summer of Love

Source: Summer of Love (1994), Chapter 10 “Dedicated to the One I Love” (p. 224)

Girl

“[Speaking about her dedication to advocating for LGBT rights] I think after playing Bette Porter on The L Word for six years I felt like an honorary member of the community. They are not just gay issues. They affect everybody because they affect the fabric of our community. I am in a position to be helpful…people are indoctrinated and they have their point of view but hopefully slowly but surely we can help change the paradigm. That's what I hope for and it's happening little by little. It's not easy.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview in Windy City Times (2 February 2011) http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=30410/.

People, Hope, Communication, Thinking

“I took her from rags right through to stitches,
Oh baby, tonight we sleep in separate ditches.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, The Bad Seed EP (1993), Deep in the Woods

Sleep, Baby

“We [Frida and Diego] moved from the house on Reforma [street] to Coyoacán, and that had an enormous influence on me. How we painted the house and the Mexican furniture, all that influenced my painting a lot. While still on Reforma, I painted a self-portrait [Self-portrait 'Time Flies', 1929] that is owned by Morillo Safa. Once in Coyoacán I began to make paintings with backgrounds and Mexican things in them. I painted the portraits of Hale's sister.... and the one of Diego, which I did not finish [this painting is lost and was never documented before]. Those three paintings, who knows where they are. Mirillo Safa has the third self-portrait [her Self-portrait of 1930], showing me bald and sitting in a cane chair.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

1950
Source: 1946 - 1953, "Song of herself"; interviews by Olga Campos, Sept. 1950, Chapter 'My Painting', p. 75

Sister, Time, Painting, Housing

“There rise her timeless capitals of Empires daily born,
Whose plinths are laid at midnight, and whose streets are packed at morn;
And here come hired youths and maids that feign to love or sin
In tones like rusty razor-blades to tunes like smitten tin.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Naaman's Song http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/LimitsRenewals/naamansong.html, Stanza 2. Other works

Love, Youth

“God had answered her prayer, not with the thing she asked for, but rather the thing she wanted most in her heart.”

Orson Scott Card book Stone Tables

Stone Tables (1997)

God, Heart

“A child learning his [her] mother tongue is learning how to name; he [she] is building up a meaning potential in respect of a limited number of social functions. These functions [instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, and imaginative] constitute the semiotic environment of a very small child, and may be thought of as universals of human culture”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Michael Halliday (1978, p. 121) as cited in: Harry Daniels, Michael Cole, James V. Wertsch (2007) The Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky. p. 148.
1970s and later

Imagination, Learning, Universe, Personality